Tag: predatory publishers

Here’s a great solicitation from David Publishing Company, a company on Beall’s list of predatory publishers (I’ve reformatted it so you don’t have to see all the fonts they used):

Dear Goring, Simon J ,

This is Earth Science and Engineering (ISSN 2159-581X), a new professional journal published across the United States by David Publishing Company, Chicago, IL, USA. We have learned your paper“RELIABLE GRIDDED ESTIMATES OF PRE-SETTLEMENT VEGETATION FOR THE UPPER MIDWEST FROM PUBLIC LANDS SURVEY DATA” in the AMQUA 2012 . We are very interested in your paper . If the paper has not published in other journal ,we would like to publish your paper in our journal Earth Science and Engineering. All your original and unpublished paper are welcome (although the paper has already been published in the conference, it can also publish in our journal, becauce there is no ISSN or ISBN for the conference). If you have the idea of making our journal a vehicle for your research interests, please send electronic version of your papers or books to us through email attachment in MS word format.

Sounds great, but if you can’t reliably edit your own email solicitations then I’m not interested. Then there’s this at the end:

As an American academic publishing group, we wish to become your friends if we may.

I’m not really sure what that’s about. Are they friendly because they’re American? Because we’re both American? Do they know I’m Canadian, and if they don’t, will that hurt my chances of being their friend? How do you become friends with a publishing group anyway? So many questions. . .

Their website leads to more questions. From the “For Authors” page (blank), to the Survey on the front page (what’s it even about?). At least they provide me with the option to list myself as an “Academician” when I submit my paper. That’s the number one reason I’ve never submitted to Nature or Science, no opportunity to list my title as “Academician”.